Am I an Oklahoma at-will employee if I have a written employment contract?

So, you are going to love the answer to this one!  Ready? 

The answer is I don’t know whether you are an at-will employee in Oklahoma if you have a written employment contract.

You might be thinking “This guy asked a question that he doesn’t know the answer to”.  You would be correct by the way if you are thinking that!  The important part here is the “why”.

I don’t know the answer to the question because having a written employment contract doesn’t mean you are not an Oklahoma “at-will” employee. What does determine if you are an Oklahoma “at-will” employee?  Whether your employer has promised and you have accepted employment for a defined period of time.  While you can read more about “at-will” in Oklahoma here, to summarize it: 

An at-will employment relationship is one that can be terminated by either the employer or the employee for any reason or no reason at all, at any time.

A written employment contract may or may not make the employment relationship “at-will”, it depends on the terms of the written contract.  Let me see the contract and I will give you an answer!

Posted by Shawn Roberts

On this blog, I write about and try to answer practical Oklahoma legal questions. My focus and most experience is in estate planning and business issues including Oklahoma non-compete law. I make a living as an attorney in the law firm I founded, Shawn J. Roberts, P.C. in Oklahoma City. I live in Edmond with my wife Amy and my two children, Sam (19) and David (11). We live precisely in the path of where the "wind comes sweeping down the plains."